Author: Ramona Levacy Billingslea

I am a 50-something Texan with a feisty cat and a supportive husband of 25+ years. With a Master's degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing, I have taught creative writing at Texas Tech, won awards for my writing and been blessed to be mentored by Horn Professor and poet Dr. Walt McDonald. I earn a living by helping my husband's family run a health food store, but my avocation is writing. I hope you enjoy reading about some of my triumphs and tragedies as I continue to work on figuring out what life is all about and on growing my ability to share my writing. May your own journey be a blessed one.
Posted in Christian Living, Faith

Why Don’t I Learn?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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As I’ve mentioned recently, my Bible reading currently finds me in the cycle of stories of the Old Testament, where God’s people love Him, forget Him, mock Him, and turn back to Him again in waves of joy and grief that often leave me wanting to scream at my Bible as I might yell at the television set–“What do you think you’re doing?  How can you be so stupid that you would worship a man-made idol or other people’s gods when you have a history of covenant with the one and only God?”

But, I usually remind myself how easy it is to armchair quarterback history.  A perspective from thousands of years in the future, after all, can easily see where others stumble, especially since my perspective includes knowledge of the New Covenant, which was completed when Christ came and sacrificed Himself for us.

Before Christ, the closest any individual came to God was through the High Priest, who was allowed to cleanse himself and enter the Holy of Holies, the most sacred place in the Temple, the place where God dwelled, only once each year in order to offer sacrifices that would give the people a way to forgiveness from God.  When Christ died on the Cross, that curtain that separated the rest of the people from that Holy of Holies literally split in two!  From that moment on, those who ask Jesus to be their Savior have entrance into the Holy of Holies through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which means that we can call on God anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

But, since human nature really never changes, how often do we also cycle through loving God, forgetting Him, and even mocking Him before we remember just how special the gift of Grace and Salvation are and return to Him again?

Modern culture likes to concentrate on a kind of non-religion where everyone can feel good about him/herself so long as we give everybody enough room to believe whatever they want, and we don’t get in anybody else’s way.

Even though Christ loves all of us so much that He died so that we all would have the chance to choose everlasting life with Him, He did not negate following God’s commands:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices–mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law–justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.   (Matthew 23:23)

There is no way to God the Father except through our belief in Christ the Son.  Christ commanded that we love God first, with everything that is in us, and to love others as we want ourselves to be loved.  Between these two commands, He covered every other rule laid out for human behavior in the Holy Word.

Yet, despite the simplicity of God’s plan for our salvation, don’t we manage to make everything so very complicated?  We judge when we should be silent.  We offer disapproval when we should be extending a helping hand.  We let ourselves off the hook when we should be listening to the voice of conscience that tells us we just messed up.  We hold onto our pride when we should submit to God’s ultimate power over us.

Despite the many downs in the history of the Jews, theirs is the ultimate victory in human history because it is through them that God chose to make Himself known to the rest of us.  I feel sorry for those who stubbornly refuse to believe that God is because, in the end, they miss out on the pinnacle-moments of knowing a loving Creator.

Through his many psalms, David, the man after God’s own heart, expresses as well as anyone the joy of knowing, truly knowing, God’s love for us:

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my savior; you save me from violence. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. (2 Samuel 22:2-4)

Like intersecting circles in a graph, we humans may have different perspectives about the world, but the one thing that should center us is coming back to our true center, which is Christ.

So, even though I want to chastise the people in the stories I read in the Old Testament, I know that I, too, am constantly on a path of winding toward and away from God, even though I have Jesus in my heart.  The main lesson I have to learn is to keep going on my knees and asking God to keep guiding me and bringing me back to center.

Posted in Christian Living, Faith

3 Lessons from David

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

David's_Grief_Over_Absolom_(Bible_Card)

After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’  (Acts 13:22)

When you read about one of Israel’s greatest heroes, David, you can see his passion for God, but you also see his humanity.  Despite David’s love for God, he still does things that go against God.  He takes another man’s wife.  He takes a census of his people, even though that denied God’s claim that Israel would become a nation so large, it could not be counted.   He lives a life of such violence to secure the Israelite nation that God leaves the building of His temple to David’s son, Solomon, whom God promises will be able to live in a peaceful kingdom.

There are many lessons to learn from the story of David’s life.  Here are three pointers that have stuck out for me in the previous weeks:

Lesson 1: Repent with everything you’ve got

When David returns the Ark to its home in Jerusalem, he rejoices in God’s glory with his whole self, dancing with such exuberance in front of all his people that one of his wives reprimands him for it because she finds his actions undignified.  But God, who sees the heart, knows the truth of David’s love for God and actually punishes the woman for her attitude towards David.

When David messes up, he repents with the same kind of passion with which he rejoices.  He wears burlap, he fasts, he begs for God to forgive him, he doesn’t try to blame anyone else or his circumstances for what he ultimately did.  Most importantly, his repentance means something because he really intends not to mess up in the same way again.  He wants to do what is right in God’s eyes.

David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, LORD, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.” (2 Samuel 24:10)

Lesson 2: Acknowledge God’s Sovereignty

David had plenty of opportunities to let his worldly successes go to his head.  Even though he had to fight many, many battles during his lifetime, he won.  As a young shepherd, he even took on a giant an entire army didn’t want to fight and killed Goliath!  Women fell at his feet, men bowed to his will, and almost no one had a bad word to say about him.  Think about how we Americans idolize the famous in our country and how few of them even believe in God, and you will begin to realize the real challenges David faced to not let his successes make him think he was close to being a god himself.

But, because David did have a heart for God, he didn’t fall into the trap of claiming his worldly successes for himself.  As you read through David’s story, he always gives God the credit for any success he has.  He asks for God’s permission before making battle plans.  He begs for God’s help for every problem that he faces.  In short, David understood that every step he took was under the protection and oversight of his heavenly Father.

I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. (of David, Psalm 34:1)

Lesson 3: Believe in God’s Love for YOU

No matter what bad things happen to David in his life, whether he felt he deserved them or not, he never doubted that God loved him and would see him through according to God’s ultimate plan.  When David’s son born out of his sinful relations with Bathsheba ultimately dies, David rises from the fasting he had been doing to ask God to change His mind, cleans himself up and begins the hard task of living again.  Because David accepts that God knows best and realizes that God loves him, he can continue to live by trying to follow God’s edicts and worship God for the One and Only God that He is.

Throughout the story of David, in even his most despairing Psalms, David always expresses the belief that God is good, God loves him, and God’s will being done is what is ultimately the best thing to happen–even when what happens really hurts.  Ultimately, I think, it is David’s sincere commitment to believing in God’s love for us that makes David’s heart like God’s own.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.   Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.  Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight;  so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.  Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.   Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;  you taught me wisdom in that secret place.  Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;  wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.  Let me hear joy and gladness;  let the bones you have crushed rejoice.  Hide your face from my sins  and blot out all my iniquity.  Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Do not cast me from your presence  or take your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation  and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.  Then I will teach transgressors your ways,  so that sinners will turn back to you.  Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,  you who are God my Savior,  and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.  Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.  You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;  you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;  a broken and contrite heart  you, God, will not despise.  (Psalm 51:1-17)

The Next Step

Being like David, flawed but loving God with all your heart, is a really grand goal.  You might consider it a first step toward the ultimate goal of being like Jesus, who had nothing to repent, but loved God, acknowledged His sovereignty and followed His will as an example for all of us.

Luckily for us Christians, we have Christ’s sacrifice so that the wrath we so deserve He took upon Himself on the cross.  With the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have a guide to help us be more Christ-like each day.  Following David’s, and Christ’s, examples, we should find ourselves praying more, throwing our whole selves into our relationship with God, and growing our faith.

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:9)

Posted in Christian Living

Get a Life: Get Your God Perspective

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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How many times have you ended a day thinking, boy, am I lucky God didn’t give me what I deserved to get today? 

How many more times do we go through a day thinking, when is God going to give so and so what he/she deserves?

The key to a full, happy, fulfilling life isn’t a 60-inch television and a Mercedes in your driveway.  Ask a Syrian Christian who has watched his baby slaughtered for refusing to deny Christ (if internet reports are indeed correct), or a single mom working three jobs to put not even enough food on the table, and they’ll tell you truthfully the value of material things.

The key to a full, happy, fulfilling life isn’t making sure that everyone around you is following the rules you’ve been taught or that you’ve decided were the right ones along the way.  Just like commercials can lead us to pick up a package of cereal at the grocery store, we can too easily be led to believe that purple is red and right and wrong have middle ground in this capital-driven culture where we are bombarded with information always.  Information distractions make it easy to point the finger at others’ wrong-doing, while we give ourselves a pass.

The key to a full, happy, fulfilling life IS knowing the word of God and concentrating on standing in the truth of that word, regardless of what the rest of the world is doing.  When we stand in that truth, we know that we don’t deserve anything, especially not the love that God showed by offering His Son as a sacrifice for our sin.  The knowledge of our own guilt should make us treat others more kindly, as fellow children of God.  We all have sins we would rather hide.  We all are known by God.

A God perspective not only sees through the eyes of love, it knows that God is infinitely patient and desires to have all of us in His Kingdom through our acceptance of Christ as our Savior.  A God perspective doesn’t look for the faults in others, but encourages the good in all of us.  It looks for ways to be the hands and feet of Christ.  It even sees how television and social media might just be equated with Baal worship and Asherah poles if we are not careful.

We can never be too careful.  The Jews of the Old Testament thought they were careful.  But over and over again, they failed to follow all of God’s instructions, and inevitably, they paid for their failure to maintain the singularity of God as God.  Eventually, they even lost the temple where He had dwelled among them.

But God’s patience is persistent.  If you read the history chapters of the Old Testament, you see time and time again that God gives people generations to straighten themselves out, but when He hands down a sentence, it is eventually carried out.  The wrath of God that is so vividly depicted in the Old Testament may make modern readers cringe and give those who are looking a handy excuse to forget about trying to apply God’s edicts to their lives, but they do so to their own detriment.

Fortunately for us, we have a Saviour who was willing to take the wrath we deserve upon Himself.  Because God’s perspective sees us through the loving eyes of Jesus, we don’t get what we really deserve.  We get life eternal with the One and Only God.

See the world through that perspective, and nothing will stop you.  Walk in God’s truth and know the kind of peace that surpasses understanding.  It is a life-long journey to completion, but we are not alone.  Keep listening for the Holy Spirit every day.  Keep praying to be guided by the Word of God.  And be patient.

This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:3-4)

Posted in Christian Living

Conversations with God: A Christian Playlist

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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When you live in humid, hot places like Houston, you either get up at 4 am to work out, or you do your exercising indoors.  Most mornings, when I am in the gym walking on the treadmill, I take advantage of this time to also read on my Bible.  Some days, however, I also take advantage of this time to listen to my Christian playlist on my iPod.  Even though these are songs that I have myself liked enough to purchase, I still find myself amazed at just how much these songs can speak to me about the wonders of God’s mercy, grace and love.

In other words, in the span of just a 35-minute workout, I find that I have experienced a really great sermon.  Maybe I am just listening for the messages I really need in that moment, but it always seems like the songs that play as the iPod shuffles through my songs are just the ones I need to hear that morning.  I credit God for those “coincidences” because, as one of my songs reminds me, He is Big Enough.

So, in case you are a song lover like me (my collection is close to 600 songs strong), I thought you might enjoy a taste of the songs that make up my Christian playlist.  Maybe you even have some suggestions of essential songs that are missing.  So, in no particular order, here’s my list:

  • Big Enough– Ayeisha Woods
  • The End — Matthew West
  • Take You Back– Jeremy Camp
  • Brave — Nicole Nordemann
  • What If You’re Wrong — Nicole Nordemann
  • Someday — Nicole Nordemann
  • Lay It Down — Nicole Nordemann
  • You Make Me Want To Live — Nicole Nordemann
  • Jacob’s Well — Nicol Sponberg
  • Resurrection — Nicol Sponberg
  • Loss for Words — Charles Billingsley
  • My Best Friend —Jaci Velasquez
  • Always Have, Always Will –Avalon
  • Alabaster — CeCe Williams
  • When I Praise — FFH
  • Free — Ginny Owens
  • I Am the Way — Mark Schultz
  • Redeemer — Nicole C. Mullen
  • Live for You — Rachel Lampa
  • Dive — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • More Than You’ll Ever Know — Watermark
  • God of Wonders — City on a Hill
  • Shackles (Praise You) — Mary Mary
  • King of Glory — Third Day
  • You Raise Me Up — Selah
  • Before the Throne of God Above — Selah
  • By the Mark — Gillian Welch
  • This is What it Means —
  • Live Out Loud — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • This Day — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • God is God — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • When Love Takes You In — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • Just to Know You — Mark Schultz
  • Joy, Joy — David Phelps
  • O, Holy Night — David Phelps
  • Mary, Did You Know — David Phelps
  • Shallow Water — Randy Travis
  • Baptism — Randy Travis
  • The Devil is Bad — W’s
  • Testify to Love — Avalon
  • The Power of a Moment — Chris Rice
  • Lord I Believe in You — Crystal Lewis
  • Healing Waters — Michelle Tumes
  • Can’t Get Past the Evidence — 4Him
  • Deep Love — Michelle Tumes
  • Do Ya — Michelle Tumes
  • With the Angels — Michelle Tumes
  • Speechless — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • The Change — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • Great Expectations — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • Fingerprints of God — Steven Curtis Chapman
  • Thankful — Caedmon’s Call
  • I’ve Always Loved You — Third Day
  • The Rumor Weed Song — W’s
  • Can’t Live a Day — Avalon
  • Cartoons — Chris Rice
  • One of these Days — FFH
  • Saving Grace — Point of Grace
  • Breathe — Sixpence None the Richer
  • With Me — Ginny Owens
  • I Am — Ginny Owens
  • Something More — Ginny Owens
  • I Know Someone — Ginny Owens
  • Simply Love You– Ginny Owens
  • The Hand — Ginny Owens
  • True Story — Ginny Owens
  • The Word — Sara Groves
  • How Is It Between Us? — Sara Groves
  • What Other Man — Natalie Grant

Don’t ever underestimate the power of music to move you.  Thanks to all of you who allow God to speak through your music to the rest of us.

In Christ,
Ramona

Posted in Christian Living

Mostly, the Mighty Fall

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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Stop acting so proud and haughty! Hannah prays when she brings the son, Samuel,  she had asked God for to dedicate to the temple. Don’t speak with such arrogance!  For the LORD is a God who knows what you have done; he will judge your actions. (1 Samuel 2: 3 NLT)

Hannah might have been speaking to her husband’s more prolific wife, Peninnah, who had taunted Hannah for many years because Hannah was barren and Peninnah had several children.  But as the rest of 1 Samuel shows, Hannah could as easily be speaking a warning to the very priest she turns her son Samuel over to, Eli.

Now, Eli was a highly respected priest, but his sons were wicked.  They mocked God by eating offerings meant to be sacrificed to Him.  They seduced the young women who helped at the entrance to the Tabernacle.  The people were so horrified, they complained to Eli, who reminded his sons that their sins were against God and should cease, but to no avail.

As Samuel grew to love God and find favor with Him, Eli and his sons grew fat on the takings from a priestly duty they had turned into a mockery. Finally, God confronts Eli with the pronouncement that his family’s actions have actually cost them the heritage of being the branch of the Levi tribe that will serve as High Priest to God.

But I will honor those who honor me, and I will despise those who think lightly of me, the LORD tells Eli.  The time is coming when I will put an end to your family, so it will no longer serve as my priests.  All the members of your family will die before their time.  None will reach old age.  You will watch with envy as I pour out prosperity on the people of Israel.  But no members of your family will ever live out their days. Those who survive will live in sadness and grief, and their children will die a violent death. And to prove that what I have said will come true, I will cause your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, to die on the same day! (1 Samuel 2: 30-34 NLT)

To underscore how far from God the people were at this time, in fulfilling His promise to Eli, God also allowed the Ark of the Covenant to be taken from the Israelites by the Philistines!  Imagine the Israelites being so far removed from God that they would actually go into battle with the Ark without first consulting God about it.

The story of God’s wrath on Eli and Israel’s loss of the Ark of the Covenant is one of those tales from the Bible that a modern world would sooner ignore than remember.  For, how often do we fail to honor God in a given day?  Do we give more to ourselves than we do to others?  Do we use His name in vain or stand mute as others speak untruths about Him?  In our consumer-driven society, do we spend more time caring about our smartphones and flat-screen televisions than we spend about doing what is right according to God?

Luckily for all of us, God came to earth in the form of Christ and sacrificed Himself, drinking the cup of wrath we deserve in order to save us.  All we have to do is accept that fact, and the grace of God allows us to be filled with His Holy Spirit.  We then begin, a new creation, on a journey that can bring light into a dark world.

But as Eli’s story reminds us, the only ONE who is mighty is GOD.  The moment we forget to face life’s challenges and daily schedules without first submitting to the will and power of the LORD is the moment we risk learning humility the hard way, by falling.

Posted in Christian Living, Faith

Don’t Judge THIS Book By Its Cover

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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Have you ever read some of the stories in the Bible and thought, why did God put THAT in HERE?

Reading through the first part of Judges in this last week, I found myself asking just such a question more than once. Let’s face it, if you are looking for action, adventure, drama, and pictures of humanity both poignant and repulsive, Judges is a roller-coaster ride of reading that will take your breath away.

In the course of just a few pages, we are introduced to strong lead characters (like Deborah or Samson), confused anti-heroes like Micah who hires his own Levitical priest, creates his own idols to worship and thinks he is setting things right with the Almighty God.

Samson kills a thousand (a round number often used in Hebrew writing to indicate a very large amount) of the Israelites’ oppressors with the jawbone of an ass but succumbs to the wiles of a pretty face, easily giving away the special gift of power that was his alone through the grace of God.

Another story tells about a man, Jephthah, who has been told to go away by his brothers because his mother was a prostitute. Not one to be put down, Jephthah found a new life in the mountains, becoming the leader of a group of desperadoes who gain such a reputation for their ability to defeat enemies and hold on to the land they claim as their own that the brothers who had once rejected Jephtha decide he is just the man they need to help save them.

The exchange that follows would make a great scene in a Western. “Let me get this straight,” says Jephthah. “I wasn’t good enough for you before, but now that you are in trouble, I’m suddenly worth talking to?”

After striking a deal that satisfies his need to feel vindicated, Jephthah uses his band to defeat his people’s enemies, all the while acknowledging that his success is dependent on God.

But, the roller coaster soon dips to an all-time low. A certain Levite takes a concubine who runs away and back home to Jerusalem to her father. The Levite goes after her. For five days, the girl’s father manages to delay the Levite from heading back home, but on the fifth day, the Levite says it is past time to go.

All of this lolly-gagging creates a situation where the Levite with his concubine and servant have to travel a little farther in one day than they might have liked in order to reach the Jewish village of Gibeah. (The servant wants to stop sooner at a non-Jewish village, but the Levite assures the servant that they will be safer among their own kind).

Hours later, as the Levite, his concubine and his servant languish in the town square of Gibeah, an Ephraimite (non-Jew) who lived in the village and had been out tending his flock comes across the traveling band and asks them what they are doing out in the open.

“We have enough food for ourselves and our animals,” the Levite explained, “but no one will give us a roof for the night. We will be OK out here in the square.”

The Ephraimite responds, “You will not be out in this square overnight. Come stay with me. You will eat my food and save your own.”

Not long after the travelers and their host settle into the latter’s home, a pounding starts at the door. The men of the town want the Levite given to them so they can abuse him. Instead, the Levite throws the concubine out the door.

After being used by the men in the town, the concubine manages to crawl to the doorstop of their host, lay her hand on it, and die. The Levite opens the door the next morning, finds his dead concubine and throws her onto his horse to complete the journey home.

Once he gets there, the Levite chops his concubine into twelve pieces that he sends to the rest of the tribes of Israel. Upon getting the message, the tribes gather and decide to go to war against the tribe of Benjamin, which is the people who were in the village where the murder took place.

In this civil war, the people go to God, who sends them into battle. In wave after wave, thousands of the Jews are killed by the Benjamites before the conflict is finally settled.

But then, the Israelites have another problem.  They figure out they have wiped out one of their own tribes!  Solution?  Since they have vowed that none of their daughters will marry a man from the Benjamin tribe, they scramble to find ways to get brides for the remaining men of Benjamin so that the tribe is not completely lost.  First, they figure out which clan had not been to the initial meetings about the Benjamites and go to their village to slaughter everyone except the 400 virgins who had never laid with a man.

When that solution still does not provide a way to give the remaining Benjamites enough brides, they scheme to find a way for the men of Benjamin to kidnap enough women from one of the tribes that had vowed not to marry their daughters to the Benjamites.  Since the women will have been kidnapped, the Israelites will not be seen to have broken their vow not to allow marriage with the tribe of Benjamin!

In the fantasy classic, The Princess Bride, the outer story, where the grandpa is reading the fable to his sick grandson, there is a point where the grandson questions his grandpa in complete exasperation, “Grandpa, why are you reading me this?”

When I found myself asking God, why are these stories in Your Bible, I was happy to find that He showed me a very plausible answer.

Last week, I wrote about Jotham’s parable of the trees. But also, throughout the book of Judges, the author tells us that

In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. (Judges 17:6 NLT)

It struck me as I read Judges that the king that verse is referring to is not a human one. Especially when you keep in mind the truth of Jotham’s parable, you realize that the one and only King God intended man to have was Himself.

As if to underscore this point, the book of Judges ends with the ominous truth it has repeated throughout the book:

In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. (Judges 21:25 NLT)

Taking stories in the Bible out of their full context is easy to do, especially when we are looking for ways to validate our own ill behavior.  But, as the book of Judges teaches us, this is a dangerous practice that violates the will of God.  For, if you find yourself excusing your own bad behavior by comparing it to some of the valleys of the Israelite story and bypass the point that God was not approving of these actions, you miss the vital key to walking in Christ’s shoes as you live this life.

God shows us the good, bad and ugly in humanity through the stories in Judges to prove the very important lesson that at any time we make a King out of anyone or thing instead of making God our King, we are doomed to misery and failure.  Worst of all, we will have disappointed God.

It seems much wiser to begin and end each day by reminding ourselves that God is our King.  The Israelites would have done a far sight better had they remembered to do so.  And that is the lesson we should be taking away from any reading of the book of Judges.  God is not only good.  God is our only King.

In the roller coaster ride of Judges, what we see is a people who have NOT made God their King.

Posted in Christian Living

The Knowledge of Trees

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Ancient_Olive_Tree_in_Pelion,_Greece

Our Bible is rife with stories of heroes who become great because they understand that anything they have or do, they owe to the power of God–and these heroes are very vocal in their praise of God as the author of all good things in their lives.

Gideon is a fine example.  A farmer at a time when the Israelites were under the harsh rule of a stronger people, the Midianites, Gideon came from the weakest family of the weakest clan of his entire people.  But when the angel of the LORD comes to Gideon and tells him that God Himself will lead the Israelites to victory, Gideon eventually believes.  In fact, he believes with such conviction, he trusts God to take only 300 men against thousands of his enemy.

Reading stories of these heroes makes me ask myself, do I honor God for His supremacy in my life, or am I always fighting God to be my own “king?”

When Gideon is gone, his concubine’s son, Abimelech, convinces the people at Shechem to make him King, travels to where his 70 “brothers” are located and slaughters all his competition for the position on one stone.  However, his youngest brother, Jotham, escapes and tells a parable of trees to show the Israelites the fallacy of wishing for an earthly king when they already have a heavenly one.

Once upon a time, Jotham explains, the trees decided to choose a king.  First they said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king!’  But the olive tree refused, saying, ‘Should I quit producing the olive oil that blesses both God and people, just to wave back and forth over the trees?’ (Judges 9: 8-9 NLV)

The fig tree and grapevine likewise refuse.  The thornbush advises to take shelter in his shade if he is to become king.  Otherwise, the thornbush will shoot a fire to “devour the cedars of Lebanon.”  In other words, nature understands that the greatest glory to be had is to thrive in the function for which God created us.  And, though He gives us the free will to choose to follow Him, He does not mean for our function to be seeing ourselves as the masters of our own destinies.  Even Jesus said, “Father, Thy will be done.”

So, am I smart enough to be an olive tree?  Can I listen to my own self-talk when I am trying to decide things without first acknowledging God’s right to make those decisions for me?  How do I let Him make those decisions?  I have to continue in my study of His word to know what is truth, to test what is told me, as Paul instructs us to do, and I have to spend time talking to God and being still to hear Him.  The latter is perhaps the most difficult skill of all.  We barely listen to our family members or friends half the time.  How much more practiced must we be to become better listeners of the Maker of the Universe!

Jotham’s parable is not the first time in the Bible we are encouraged to look to nature to learn how to have an even stronger relationship with God, and it certainly isn’t the last.  Remember Christ’s declaration:

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”  But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!” (Luke 19:39-40 NIV)

So, whether I am a tree or a stone, may I always be ready to put God first in all things, which means I will become a more loving servant who knows better than to reach for the auspices of King.

Posted in Christian Living

Who Knows You Better?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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You see my imperfections
Still You say I’m a masterpiece
A marvelous reflection
The image of Yourself in me

You paint with strokes of grace
Undoing my disguise
You say beauty lies in the true story

Read more: Ginny Owens – True Story Lyrics | MetroLyrics

I read an interesting “take” on the concept of predestination in my Ryrie Study Bible notes this week.  The gist of the idea is that God has chosen those who will be saved in that He already knows who will and who will not choose to follow Him.  Sorry, John Calvin, but the first rule of our great and glorious God is that He does give us the free will to choose.  He knows what we are going to choose even before we are born, but He lets us go forward anyway.

This isn’t to say that God doesn’t help us.  Quite the contrary.  Being perfect and all-knowing, He also knows what we will be asking for and which prayers He will answer yes or no before we even begin to pray.  Jesus tells us to ask for our daily bread.  He also tells us that asking for even the greatest of things with a true sense of belief will allow us to accomplish those things, as long as what we are asking for is the will of God.

As Ginny Owens reminds us in one of her great songs, we imperfect humans are a masterpiece to our Holy LORD, made perfect through the sacrifice of Christ for our sins.  The grace of Christ’s love for us, the working of the Holy Spirit in us, strips away the facades required by an imperfect, sinful world.  Without a body subjected to the desires of the flesh, we can more easily see our true story, shining the light of Christ in a world of darkness without fear.

How can we best be our true story to a world that likes to glitz things up and mask imperfections?  We can begin each day by thanking God for His mercy and ask Him to make His presence known to us as we work our way through the facades of the day.  Asking, believing, we can be strong and courageous because God makes us so.

And that is the truest story of all.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity

Why We Remember

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

remember photofunia

Memory is a tricky thing.  We all have a tendency to remember events in such a way that makes us look the best.  Sometimes, or in some areas, we remember events so that we can see ourselves in our worst possible light, feeding our own insecurities or personal issues.  The inability of we humans to remember accurately is part of what makes eye witnesses so unreliable.

Having created us, God knows our faults.  He knows that we will have to consciously make the effort to remember our own fallacies in order to maintain our healthy fear of Him, the fear that is the knowledge of His awesomeness and makes us want to worship Him and do what is right.  On their trek through the desert once they escaped Egypt, even though God perpetually saved the Israelites from their own follies, they seem to fail to remember.  They complain, they want to return to Egypt, they doubt God will keep His promises, they worship other gods.

Because God’s memory never fails, He remembers His promises.  As He has Moses prepare the Israelites to finally enter the promised land, He has Moses implore them:

“Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.  And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.  And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.  Repeat them again and again to your children.  Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.  Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders.  Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”  (Deut. 6:4-9 NLT)

God intends to keep His promises to make Israel a great nation, but He expects them to remember His instructions.  (At one point late in the 40-year journey through the desert, God is ready to wipe out the entire bunch and begin again until Moses talks Him out of that plan because God is so disgusted by the Israelites perpetual forgetfulness and thanklessness.)  And why was the remembering of God and His promises so vital for the Israelites?  They were about to embark on the final length of their journey, into a promised land that was filled with pagan peoples who might easily tempt the Israelites into forgetting that God was the one and only, thus allowing them to slip into actions detestable to God, like making idols or touching unclean things.

But the most important reason for remembering is this:  For we will be counted as righteous when we obey all the commands the LORD our God has given us (Deut. 5:25 NLT)  In the New Testament, Grace makes a difference about our source of righteousness:  I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; Paul writes, rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.  For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. (Philippians 3:9 NLT)

Faith versus works does not lower the bar of our commitment to remembering God.  In fact, it raises it.  Paul explains:

But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. . . .I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. (Philippians 3: 12-14  NLT)

Remembering God means forgetting the wrongs or perceived wrongs done to us by others, putting God’s wants before our own, and even forgetting what good we may have done so as not to rest on our laurels and fail to achieve all that we might through the Holy Spirit working in us.  When we remember how much God has done for us, it makes us love God even more, and it should make us love others, no matter what perceived hurts they cause us.

Remembering God also means pouring out our thankfulness to Him.  God wants to hear our gratitude and our acknowledgement that all we have and all we are, we owe to Him.  Paul implores us, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7 NLT).

Christ instructs us to pray with this attitude of gratefulness:  Our Father, who art in heaven, Christ tells us to begin, hallowed be thy name.  In acknowledging our relationship to God as Father, we are reminded that He who made everything wants to have a relationship with us.  In acknowledging His holiness, we realize how grateful we should be to have a relationship with God, to know His love for us because of grace.

When you are faced with the challenges of life, whether you are having physical problems, mental problems, work problems, family problems, or financial problems, it can be so easy to just whine to God or be mad at Him and ignore Him (as if that somehow hurts God instead of us!).  But when we are in times of peril it is even more important to remember first to be thankful, to acknowledge what God has done for us through the grace of Christ.

Finally, when we remember to be thankful, I think it makes it easier for us to be the love of Christ to those who do not yet believe, to shine His light as Christians are supposed to do.  In his book,  Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life, Abbot Christopher Jamison describes Christian patience this way:

“Patience is more subtle: it is the attempt to live out in a positive frame of mind the difficulties that come from trying to obey and love other people”

It is so easy to forget.  But a successfully run race with Christ can only be accomplished when first we remember.

 

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Faith

3 Lessons from Numbers for Christians

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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My Bible readings have me in the beginning of this only Book that truly matters, and so I am asking God to help me see the lessons I should be learning from what can sometimes seem tedious study, since so much of the story of the Jews’ time in the desert is filled with specifics about measurements for building the tabernacle, the specific punishments for different crimes, etc.  Still, I believe God is showing me some pretty interesting things because I have asked for Him to, in faith.

Reading in the book of Numbers, I tried to see myself in the shoes of the Jews.  They might have had the privilege of witnessing God’s miracles and seeing His presence up close–like having manna and water delivered to them out of nothing and seeing God appear in a great cloud and column of fire to guide them, but I have the knowledge of God’s greatest miracle: that He gave His only Son to die for our sins.

Knowing this, can I see my own worries and misplaced concerns about everyday life as the same kind of backsliding that I scoff at when I read about the Jews and their golden calves or whining about being tired of the same kind of food every day?  Reading the early parts of Numbers in this way, I have come up with three conclusions I can try to apply to my walk with Christ.

  1. God keeps His promises
    • God said He would rescue the Jews from Egypt and take care of them.  But, every time you turn around, the Jews keep wanting to go back to Egypt, back to slavery and harsh taskmasters.  However, the Jews don’t remember these negative sides to life in Egypt when they are whining to Moses.  All they remember is having a variety of food there and not just manna.
    • Don’t we Christians do similar things?  Christ promises that He will be with us always.  Christ admonishes us to look toward treasures in heaven and not on earth.  He wants us to understand that our relationship with Him is what matters most, not the car repair we have to find a way to pay for.  And yet, how many times do we fret instead of trusting that Christ also keeps His promises?  He brings us through the storms in this life, often not in ways we expected, but usually we can look back and see the good Christ works in the things that happen to us, especially when we approach those things by putting our belief in Him first.
  2. God doesn’t want us to fail.
    • I think it is a mistake to place on an omnipotent God an understanding of emotions that is limited by our human perceptions.  In other words, when God gets angry, it is in no way the same as when we humans get angry.  There just isn’t a way for us to understand God’s “emotions” unless He chooses to reveal them to us.
    • I say all that to propose that the punishments that God metes out when the Jews fall short should not necessarily be seen so much as an anger response as a disappointment that borders on mourning.  And what, exactly, is God mourning except the loss of those who fail to have faith in Him despite everything He is doing to show the Jews that He alone is God?
    • If God mourned the failure of the people He had chosen to establish Himself as the one and only God of the universe, how much more must he mourn when people reject Christ, or when we Christians reject the lessons Christ worked so hard to teach us?
    • The bottom line of the cycle of lack of faith and punishment as the Jews wandered in the desert is the lesson that God does not want us to fail.  Think about how many times God allowed the Jews to begin again with their relationship with Him.  Then, think about how Christ allows us to awake each morning as a new creature.  As long as we acknowledge our sins to Him and repent of them, we get to walk with Christ in the presence of God once again!
    • No greater love….
  3. God wants our BEST.
    • Every sin or uncleanness in the book of Numbers requires sacrifices that begin with the offering of the best that the person has to offer.  Lambs with no defect, the best grain, the finest incense.  Only by giving the very best that a person owned could the person really feel the sacrifice required to make things right with God again.
    • The Jews’ relationship with God in the desert always involved barriers.  God spoke to Moses directly, who then conveyed God’s messages to the people.  Thick, wonderfully made curtains separated the unconsecrated masses from the inner sanctuary, where only the anointed, clean priests could enter to present the best of the best to God to redeem those who had sinned.
    • With Christ, the inner curtain has been rent in two!  With the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and with Christ as our High Priest, we can speak to God directly and know that He is listening and hears us.
    • If God wanted the best of what the Jews in the desert had to offer, what do you think He wants from those of us who have chosen to accept the Grace and gift of the Cross?  Do you give Christ your BEST every day?  Do you at least think about giving Him your BEST?
    • If you are wondering what the BEST is for a Christian, begin with a study of the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ expounds what it looks like to be a true citizen of the kingdom of heaven.  He doesn’t promise that it will be easy, but He does promise to be with us every step of the way.

There are lessons in the Bible for all of us, not just in the New Testament.  Even though the Old Testament books include some cultural references and ways of life that are thousands of years removed from modern life, people still retain the same basics of human nature that can bring us closer to God or push us farther apart from Him.

The choice, as always in a fallen world where free will exists, is ours to make.  As you study the Bible, remember to ask God to show you ways you can apply what you read in your every day life, no matter how far removed the events you are reading about seem to be from your usual experiences.  God keeps His promises.  And one of those promises is that those who ask, believing, will receive.